One of Earth's most common nanomaterials is facilitating breakthroughs in tackling climate change: clay. In a new study, researchers at Purdue University, in collaboration with experts from Sandia National Laboratories, have potentially uncovered a game-changing method for using clay to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air to help mitigate climate change. Their work, which earned them a 2024 R&D 100 Award and has a patent application in progress, was recently published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

A team of chemists at the University of Cambridge has developed a powerful method for adding single carbon atoms to molecules more easily, offering a simple one-step approach that could accelerate drug discovery and the design of complex chemical products.

MIT engineers find making hydrogen from soda cans and seawater is scalable and sustainable. Their method’s overall carbon emissions are on par with those of other green hydrogen technologies.

Researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou) and Sichuan University have successfully extended the direct measurement of ¹²C(¹²C,a₀)²³Na down to E_c.m.=2.22MeV. This reaction—known as carbon burning—is a primary process in massive stars and the ignition trigger for Type Ia supernova explosions. Using an Highly Oriented Pyrolytic Graphite (HOPG) target and an innovative time-projection chamber (TPC) coupled to silicon detectors, the team reached unprecedented sensitivity to this key astrophysical process. The experiment also revealed significant radiation damage to the HOPG target under the intense carbon beam, which reduced the yield of α and proton. These results provide crucial data for nuclear astrophysics and point toward future improvements in low-energy fusion experiments.